Remember the very famous Muhammad Ali speech where he says "I am the greatest..."? He was announcing this, bragging, whatever you want to call it. However, if you wanted to challenge him in person on that statement related to boxing, I'm sure that he could make it painfully obvious for you that he had good reason to believe it.

Remember the very famous Muhammad Ali speech where he says "I am the greatest..."? He was announcing this, bragging, whatever you want to call it. However, if you wanted to challenge him in person on that statement related to boxing, I'm sure that he could make it painfully obvious for you that he had good reason to believe it.

It's fun (well not really fun) and interesting to check out various real estate sites that still feature billboard-like pages with "Top Producer" or other "I am the greatest..." type statements.

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for stats about your talents and past performance, number of sales, how you get better sale price-to-list price ratios for your listing clients, etc. And, I've written a lot here about how people love real estate market statistics, whether they're buying, selling, or just watching the market.

Your "About" page can certainly give a lot of this type of information, as if they take the time to go to this page, they really must want to know more about you and how you conduct your business. However, it's rarely where searchers land when they arrive at your site. They have questions about the local real estate market, or about how to buy and sell, etc. They are searching for answers, and you should be providing search content that provides them.

how negotiations work

current market conditions and trends

how inspections and repair negotiations work

what is an ILR, survey, or other names for surveyor reports

what is a title binder or committment

explaining exceptions and requirements in a title binder

There's a lot more, and every one of the questions you hear every day should become a dedicated page on your website working the keywords in that question. I can tell you that in watching my daily site statistics, I find almost every day that there are visitors who arrive from searches like those, all wanting information or an education in how things work in real estate.

Now, I could just have a single page that SAYS I am the authority on local real estate, "the greatest," but it works better if I constantly show them with information and educational articles. I "knock them out" with data, information and statistics. I let them decide if I'm the authority or not. One way to stand out with those analytical types (many own businesses and are upscale buyers and sellers) is to provide "absorption rate" statistics on your site.

From any page where you talk about market statistics, offer a link to your Absorption Rate page. This is where the number crunchers get really happy, and you can really shine as the local market trends authority, even possibly predicting a trend in advance. The what & how of absorption rates:

The absorption rate is the rate at which inventory is being sold off in the market.

Taking an average over a period for the number of closings and dividing by the current number of listings tells you how much inventory (in months) you have in the market that day.

If the average number of closings monthly over the last 6 months is 100/month (absorption), and you currently have 600 homes listed, you have a 6 month supply of inventory.

This is an image of a simple spreadsheet you can post to each month to keep up with the numbers and have the current absorption rate and number of months of inventory ready for an article or to quote to a prospect, a buyer or a seller. Why tell a buyer or seller? This can give them an idea of how the market is moving, or if it's stable, and coupled with the sale-to-list percentage (average of sold prices as related to list prices), tell them how it looks from their side for buying or selling right now.

Taking the numbers in the spreadsheet, we see that at the end of December, a six month set of numbers showed that we had 8 months of inventory in the pipeline. Since the average number of sales in June of 2012 were almost the same for the 6 and 12 month period, the 6 months of inventory applied for both. However, take a look at the number of listings in June 2012. It was down around 24% from the number six months prior. This increased the absorption rate and lowered the number of months in inventory significantly.

And, if we take just the numbers from June and not an average, we get an even faster absorption rate. This could be seasonal, but that's an iterpretation you can make as the local market authority. What else does this tell us? There could be a trend to higher prices with lower inventories and consistent demand. If demand increases, this would really speed up the market and possibly influence prices upward even more. When you're talking to a listing prospect, this type of information should influence the listing price as it modifies your CMA. The CMA is past data, but this is current and even possibly forward-looking.

This really isn't a lot of work, and it takes very little time to do. A few minutes each month to enter the sold data, then entering the number of listings each month as well. I didn't do monthly listing quantities in this sheet, but it's a good idea, as you may want to update your article each month with new absorption rates and inventory month numbers. RealtySoft makes it easy to create your real estate website and makes it even easier to update your website pages, and you can even build a table to display ongoing results on your about page. This will historically depict absorption rates and allow you to point out in comments what you perceive to be developing trends.

I can tell you that I'm the only one in my marketplace who even discusses absorption rates in any real detail, and I know that it builds credibility and business. Am I "the greatest"? No, but I have some of the greatest site content for local real estate that keeps my visitors returning for more.

About Jim Kimmons:

Jim Kimmons, with more than 16 years experience as a licensed real estate agent and broker in 3 states, is a consultant to Realtors in how to use technology to market and manage their businesses. He has also written books and eBooks on Internet marketing and real estate. Jim is RealtySoft's chief evangelist and is a compensated regular contributor to the RealtySoft.com blog.

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